


Stars to Fill My Dreams

by Santosha



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: EDAs, Geekery about Gallifreyan language, Led Zeppelin - Freeform, M/M, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Stuff almost this crazy happened in the EDAs okay, but sex and drugs are off camera, dancing days are here again?, forget it Ten it's Chinatown, pre-Eleven/Jack (if you ask Jack anyway)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:50:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Santosha/pseuds/Santosha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate fails to keep a secret, and later has to write a really embarrassing report.  Osgood has the best day ever.  </p><p>Fitz wants to go to a Led Zeppelin concert. The Doctor'll take him, as soon as they stop for one quick rescue.</p><p>The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors are reminded what it was like to be that velvet-coated fellow, with very different responses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor" in the middle of obsessive listening to Led Zeppelin.
> 
> I thought, the War Doctor really should be used to all the kissing, after having just been Eight. Seriously.
> 
> And I thought, Fitz would totally want to go see all the classic rock bands that are just a bit after his time. Here's a live clip of the song Fitz is listening to: http://youtu.be/_ZiN_NqT-Us, and here's the one Kate mentions: http://youtu.be/nQH3LtNePgI in case.

Kate Stewart was beginning to agree with her father’s opinion that one Doctor was “more than enough.”

Two TARDISes had materialized right outside UNIT’s Tower of London. The Doctor in pinstripes and the one with the bowtie had combined forces to badger her from both sides at once about a signal coming from UNIT’s vault.

“I’m not letting you in the vault,” she said. “We built it on purpose to keep you out.”

“It’s a distress call,” said the pinstriped one. “You can’t just ignore it!”

“It’s calling my TARDIS specifically, so strongly that two of me heard it,” said the bowtie one.

Osgood raised her hand. “I could bring the item up to a lab.”

“Yes.” “Excellent.” The Doctors looked at Kate expectantly. She scowled at Osgood. The item was one of the main things the vault was supposed to be keeping secret from the Doctor. Sometimes Osgood seemed to care more about the Doctor’s approval than about Kate’s, who was supposed to be her boss.

Before she could speak, a familiar wheezing, scraping sound behind them announced the arrival of a third TARDIS.

“We have to turn that signal off, or mask it,” said the pinstriped Doctor, frantically. “Or we’ll all be showing up here.”

The Doctor that stepped out of the third TARDIS was curly-haired and dressed in a velvet frock coat. Kate recognized him from a photo in the UNIT files.

“Ooh, haven’t seen him for ages,” said the bowtie Doctor.

“Hello,” said the velvet Doctor cheerfully. “Was someone calling me?”

“We’ll explain everything we know but first we have to act fast,” the pinstriped Doctor babbled. “Kate can you bring the item out here and a table and just bring the whole lab setup out here to the courtyard can you.”

“Right,” the bowtie Doctor picked up the thread. “We have three TARDISes now, so we can extend their shields around the workspace and cut the signal off so it stops broadcasting to other TARDISes. I mean, if three of us aren’t enough then we are in real trouble.”

“Three of us,” the velvet Doctor puzzled. “Oh, am I crossing my own timeline? I always wondered why that doesn’t happen more often. You are other, ah, regenerations?”

“I promise, we’ll sort that all out in just a minute,” said the bowtie Doctor.

“Here,” said the pinstriped Doctor, who had been scribbling fast on a piece of scrap paper. “The frequency. Mesh the shields, a full sphere around the courtyard, so we keep the signal in. Kate, decide who is going to be in the workspace and who is out.” He showed her the size of the shield, with a sweep of his arm.

The pinstriped and bowtie Doctors lunged for their TARDISes. The velvet Doctor took the paper scrap, shrugged agreeably, and went back into his own. Kate sighed, and gave orders for the object and the lab table to be moved out to the courtyard. So much for secrecy. Osgood stayed put, star-struck and determined not to miss anything.

A few minutes later, everyone regrouped inside the shimmery shield projected by three versions of the TARDIS.

“At least we got the signal blocked before any of the really annoying ones showed up,” said the pinstriped Doctor. “You two aren’t so hard to work with. You’re my favorites. After the cricket-y one, of course.”

The velvet Doctor was looking blank. “You’ll have to excuse my confusion. I have some problems with my memory. I don’t know whether I should know you or not.” He looked uncertainly from the pinstriped Doctor to the bowtie Doctor.

“You don’t know us,” said the bowtie Doctor gently. “We’re future versions of you.”

“So you both responded to the same call.” The velvet Doctor moved on. “Let’s take a look at this device.”

“Vortex manipulator,” said the pinstriped Doctor. “I can see why you didn’t want me to see it.”

He and the bowtie Doctor shot skeptical looks at Kate.

“Spare me the lecture on how humans shouldn’t be trusted with time travel technology,” she snapped. “Just figure out who’s calling you.”

At the table, the velvet Doctor was looking the manipulator over. “It’s not clear where the signal is coming from. This isn’t how this thing is meant to be used, is it?”

“No,” said the pinstriped Doctor. “Someone is improvising.”

“It’s a bit clever,” said the bowtie Doctor.

“We should be able to work out a way to find the origin,” said the pinstriped Doctor.

Kate tuned them out after that, as the conversation turned technical. Equipment was moved out of the TARDISes and set up. Doctors tinkered and muttered to themselves and borrowed tools from each other.

After a while, she revised her opinion on having more than one Doctor around. The advantage to it was that when he got cranky, he could take it out on himself rather than on other people.

“Give me that,” said the bowtie Doctor. “I know you had your issues, but I didn’t think that _incompetence at maths_ was one of them.”

The pinstriped Doctor glared. “The calculations are not wrong. Your design just isn’t working.”

“Is it time for a tea break?” the velvet Doctor suggested. “I’ll see if I can volunteer Fitz to make it.” He went over and pushed his TARDIS door open. Inside, a bluesy electric guitar was soloing at top volume. Glancing back at them, the velvet Doctor commented, “Since I’ve been loving you,” rather cryptically. “He’s dead to the world, listening to that. Faster to make it myself.” He disappeared inside.

“Fitz,” said the bowtie Doctor affectionately.

“He was _fantastic,_ ” said the pinstriped Doctor.

In a few minutes, the velvet Doctor brought out an immaculate silver tea set and enough delicate, floral-pattern china teacups for everyone, including Kate and the charmed Osgood.

“I forgot how posh you were,” said the pinstriped Doctor.

“Lucky if we find clean mugs in my TARDIS,” said the bowtie Doctor.

They worked for a while in peaceful silence, teacups at everyone’s elbows. After a bit, a rumpled young man came out of a TARDIS, wearing a battered leather jacket. That would be Fitz, Kate presumed.

“So are you going to leave me for Jimmy Page?” the velvet Doctor asked him.

“Do you think he’d have me?” Fitz looked around, found no extra chairs inside the shield, and sat on the ground, folding his long arms and legs awkwardly.

“I promise, we’ll head to San Francisco as soon as we pull off this one little unplanned rescue.”

“No worries,” said Fitz. “It’s not like I’m not used to it.”

“Going to California,” the bowtie Doctor said. “You know, you can put your music on out here, if you want, Fitz. We’ve done the hard part, now it’s just a bunch of boring scanning.”  
  
The pinstriped Doctor hummed agreement, with his head down on the table.

A while later, with the A-side of _Led Zeppelin III_ drifting out of one set of open TARDIS doors, the pinstriped Doctor said, “There.”

The bowtie Doctor perked up. “Now just reverse the manipulator to bring the signal origin _here_ instead of taking itself _there_ …”

“I know what I’m doing, stop your backseat driving.”

He touched the control, and without fanfare, there was suddenly a ragged, dirty man standing with them.

“Jack!” said the bowtie Doctor. “I thought it might be you. Something about the work just said Time Agent training.”

“Doctor!” Jack looked around. “Doctors, I guess. Wow.”

“When you send a distress call, you don’t fool around.”

“Thanks for the rescue. I mean it. Being tortured to death, I’ve kind of been there and done that, you know? I didn’t feel like I needed to experience that again.”

All three Doctors made faces of knowing sympathy. Osgood looked as aghast as Kate felt.

“What are you guys listening to? UNIT is cooler than it used to be,” Jack commented.

The bowtie Doctor sniffed. “It’s always cool when I’m here.”

The pinstriped Doctor picked up the vortex manipulator and disabled the signal. “We can drop the shield now.”

“I had this horrible vision of eight or nine more versions of me showing up,” explained the bowtie Doctor.

“Gosh, that would be terrible,” Jack said, deadpan. Osgood giggled. Kate felt that Osgood was having entirely too much fun today.

All three Doctors vanished into their TARDIS interiors for a moment. Osgood handed the battered-looking Jack her cup of tea, in the absence of any better first aid supplies. The shield wobbled around them and disappeared. When the Doctors came back out, Jack was busy charming Osgood. Kate tried not to roll her eyes.

The pinstriped Doctor said, “At least shower off the filth and blood before you start saying ‘hello’ to people, will you Jack?”

The velvet Doctor looked at Jack with confusion. “What an extraordinary presence you have.” He came a bit closer, studying him with a frown, then turned back with a questioning look at Fitz, who was lounging on the ground again.

Fitz shrugged and shook his head. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. Must be a Time Lord thing.”

“Suppose I can’t ask about something that’s in my future, can I?” The velvet Doctor looked at the carefully expressionless faces of his later selves, and then grinned ruefully at Jack. “I’ll have to look forward to meeting you later, then.” He turned away.

Jack put out a hand to stop him. “Wait… you said ‘extraordinary.’ Don’t I feel - wrong - to you?”

The velvet Doctor looked surprised. “Wrong?” He examined Jack again. “You’re definitely different. I could pick you out of a crowd with my eyes closed. I get the feeling there’s a story. I wish I could hear it.”

“You’ll know it,” said Jack, shakily. “Later on.”

The velvet Doctor looked him in the eye and nodded, accepting a promise, and then whirled away, coat flaring. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “it’s been a pleasure. If you’ll excuse us, Fitz and I will be off to San Francisco. We have concert tickets.” He was stuffing tools and teacups into his coat pockets at random. Fitz whooped.

The bowtie Doctor moved up and pushed Jack into a chair, then sat down next to him with a thoughtful expression. The pinstriped Doctor’s face was tense and set.

The velvet Doctor herded Fitz toward his TARDIS. “Just please remember this time not to mention any songs that haven’t been written yet, all right? It’s June 1973, take a look at what they’ve actually released by then, will you?”

The doors closed on Fitz’s grumbled response, and their TARDIS disappeared with a wheeze.

Jack whistled. “Why are all of your regenerations so incredibly hot?”

The pinstriped Doctor glared at Jack half-heartedly, and then looked the other way and asked, “What’s the matter with you?”

The bowtie Doctor was staring after the missing TARDIS. “You really don’t remember where he’s going, do you? June 2, 1973, San Francisco, Led Zeppelin concert with Fitz?”

“Should I?” The pinstripe Doctor was starting to pack up equipment when the memory hit. “Oh no, not THAT night.” He slid down to sit on the ground with his back to the table.

“Hey hey what can I do.” The bowtie Doctor snickered at him.

“I did not need those memories back, thanks.” He knocked the back of his head against the table leg a couple of times.

“Good times, bad times. Of all our memories, those aren’t the worst.”

“Just give me a minute, will you? It’s very distracting to suddenly get a vivid download of a bunch of X-rated memories I’d forgotten about.”

“Poor Doctor. Has it been a long time since you rock and rolled?” The bowtie Doctor tipped his chair back and played a few seconds of air guitar.

“Why are you such a prat?”

They exchanged a glance, and spoke in unison.

“Because I’m you.”

“Because you’re me.”

“No quarter, huh?” The pinstripe Doctor rubbed his hands over his face and rumpled his hair into greater disarray, then got up and started packing again.

“That’s the spirit.”

“I take it you and Fitz had a _really_ good time at this concert?” Jack guessed, intrigued.

“That idiot in the velvet coat had sort of a thing for mind-altering substances,” the pinstriped Doctor complained. “As if his brain wasn’t scrambled enough on its own.”

The bowtie Doctor defended him. “It was 1973. Smoking pot together was just like saying hello.” 

“Apparently we ‘said hello’ all right. I can’t believe I forgot that. I feel like I should send Robert Plant some flowers.”

“Heartbreaker,” said the bowtie Doctor, amused.

“Robert Plant?” Osgood squeaked.

Jack was grinning like Christmas had come early. “He’s in that band Fitz was listening to?”

“Don’t feel sorry for Robert,” said the bowtie Doctor. “The song he wrote about it was some of his best work.”

Kate spoke up, sounding weary. “Do not try to persuade me that ‘Kashmir’ is about you.” It was going to be bad enough already writing this up for the Doctor’s UNIT file. Her father never had to sign his name to this kind of crap.

The pinstriped Doctor snapped his fingers and his TARDIS doors opened obediently. The bowtie Doctor frowned at him. “She’s just humoring you, answering to your finger snap. You know that, right?”

Ignoring this, the pinstriped Doctor started carrying equipment inside. From inside his TARDIS a few drumbeats started a bluesy Led Zeppelin track.

“I didn’t ask for that,” he said, surprised. “She’s getting into the spirit of things.”

“’When the Levee Breaks,’” the bowtie Doctor said.

When everything was packed up, the pinstripe Doctor came back out, leaned on the table, and rubbed his temples. “It’s been good to see you, Jack, but I’m leaving now. This day… I just can’t. I’m out of can.”

“ _Out of can?”_ The bowtie Doctor shot him a look. “What have you been doing, hanging out on Tumblr?”

Jack watched the pinstriped Doctor with concern. “You all right, Doctor?”

“I almost lost my mind,” the pinstriped Doctor said, conversationally. “And I like my mind. I like thinking with it.”

“Better,” the bowtie Doctor said, “but your Jack Nicholson impression stinks.”

The pinstriped Doctor saluted everyone, sloppily, from the doors of his TARDIS, timing his goodbye to a dramatic cymbal crash and pause in the music. The bowtie Doctor rolled his eyes at the dramatic exit. _Crying won’t help you, praying won’t do you no good,_ sang Plant, just as the doors slammed shut. The pinstriped Doctor’s TARDIS wheezed out of sight.

“Some of my bodies wear out physically,” said the bowtie Doctor, “but it’s the mental health wearing thin on that one. Don’t know if you noticed.”

Jack said, “He came to see me a while back. Looking like all four of the horsemen of the Apocalypse rolled into one. Wouldn’t speak. I think it must have been soon after this, for him.”

“I think you might be right. Got back one tiny repressed memory of getting high and fucking a 70’s rock star and he’s practically having a nervous breakdown over it.”

They were quiet for a minute. “I don’t think it’s so bad,” said the Doctor, “my poetic-looking former self running around smoking dope and collecting megastar notches on his bedpost.”

“I miss everything fun,” Jack lamented.

“Dancing days,” said the Doctor. Then he stood up, dusting his hands together. “So this vortex manipulator was yours? Do you want it back?”

Jack shook his head. “I gave it to UNIT. They can keep it. You’re leaving, then?” His face and voice were expressionless.

“Would you like to come with me?” asked the Doctor. “Given the history between Torchwood and UNIT, if you stay here you’re likely going to be interrogated. You look like a shower and something to eat might be more appropriate.”

Jack looked stunned.

“I’m not going to interrogate Captain Harkness,” Kate said, as if either of them was listening. “You’re a few years out of date on your UNIT-Torchwood relations, Doctor.”

“Goodbye, Kate,” the Doctor continued. “Don’t get into too much trouble with this.” He dropped the vortex manipulator back on the table. “Though you probably will, and I’ll probably come and save you just the same.”

She smiled sweetly at him. “My report’s going to make a rather lively addition to your UNIT file this time, Doctor. See you next time.”


	2. 2

The Doctor showed him to a shower in the TARDIS. “Find yourself something to wear when you’re done,” he said, pointing out a closet. 

The closet turned out to be full of clothes Jack’s size. There was even a military greatcoat. Jack touched the wall. “Are these from you, sweetheart?”

The TARDIS changed the pitch of her hum briefly.

“Thanks.”

Jack wandered out to the console room, clean and wearing red suspenders over a blue shirt. The Doctor paused, phone in hand. “Was about to order takeaway. Do you want to pick or should I just get a variety?”

“Get everything. I’m starving. Since when do you have a phone?”

“Amy and Rory. They domesticated me. ‘Call before showing up, Doctor, we’re trying to have a life.’” The Doctor punched a couple of buttons on the phone. Apparently the restaurant was on speed dial.

Jack tried and failed to imagine the forces of nature Amy and Rory must be, to train the Doctor to call before showing up.

He watched the Doctor, always moving, talking on the phone, ordering food, and asking about someone’s husband and children. The Doctor looked different, and the TARDIS looked different, but somehow he felt right at home here, after all the centuries he’d been away.

Don’t get comfortable, he told himself. 

“Twenty minutes,” said the Doctor, hanging up the phone. “I’m not going to push our luck by trying to make that small of a jump, no offense, sweetheart.” That last was addressed to the console. “You know we’d just end up five hundred years from now on another planet in the middle of a war zone, and Jack said he was hungry.”

Jack supposed the TARDIS’s hum contained an answer to that. He said, “I appreciate this, Doctor. I know it’s hard for you to be around me. You can drop me off somewhere as soon as you need to.”

The Doctor went still for the first time, looking at Jack, and said, “Sit down a moment, will you?” There was a sofa in the corner. Jack wondered if it had been there all along or the TARDIS had just produced it. He sat on it, and the Doctor came over to sit beside him. 

“I figured something out today,” the Doctor began. “When the velvet-coated fellow said you didn’t feel wrong. I realized, I got damaged in the Time War.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Jack said softly.

“The timelines were mangled. There’s no English for this. It was like glare for your eyes, or noises too loud for your ears? Only for time sense. I got burned. Oversensitive. I hadn’t realized that regenerating a couple of times didn’t fix it.”

Jack frowned. “This is why you couldn’t be around me.”

“I told you that you were wrong, but actually there was something wrong with me. You aren’t wrong. You’re just loud. Bright. Whatever the time sense equivalent would be.” He exhaled, vulnerable and impatient. “In my language there would be words for these ideas and I wouldn’t be stuck trying to explain in figures of speech. It’s like when person has a migraine. Light is painful, even if to other people it’s just an ordinary bright sunny day.”

“You wanted me to know that I’m not wrong,” Jack said. He saved that knowledge carefully away. It was ridiculous how much the Doctor’s good opinion of him still mattered after all this time. 

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “and also I wanted to point out that the fellow in the pinstripes – he could… I mean I could, when I was him... Stupid English language again. Gallifreyan has whole separate sets of pronouns for talking about yourself in past bodies, and yourself in future bodies.”

“That’s what you wanted to point out?”

“No, sorry, I mean, pinstripes-me could at least manage to be in the same room with you for a while, before the time sense migraine started to kick in. Leather-jacket-me, the one before that? It was agony just sharing a space station with you.”

The memory of being abandoned on the Game Station still had a bite to it. Jack let go of that, which he’d been practicing doing for centuries now, and tried to focus on what the Doctor was saying now. “You’re saying that it’s getting better over time.” 

“Every regeneration heals it a bit more. I’m pretty sure you still look brighter than you should. Metaphorically speaking. But I’ve lost track of what’s normal, and there’s no one around to ask for a baseline. Who knows if that brain-damaged velvet-coated me has a normal time sense.”

Jack didn’t really care about normal. “Am I hurting you right now?”

“No. That’s what I’m trying to get at. You’re just a bit intense. I’m starting to get a knack, like how you’d avoid looking straight at the sun.”

That was metaphorically speaking too, apparently, because the Doctor was looking right at Jack. “So if you want to,” he said, “there’s no reason not to stick around for a while.”

If I want to. “Are you asking me to stay?”

That made the Doctor fidget and look at the floor. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be that velvet-coated fellow,” he said, as if that were an answer. “He didn’t keep his distance from people.”

Very nobly, Jack refrained from making a joke about how he didn’t keep his distance from Robert Plant, anyway. “He and Fitz seemed pretty comfortable around each other.”

“Fitz stuck around a long time. We went through a lot together.”

“Are you saying you think you and I could have a friendship like that?” Jack thought about the trust and ease that he had just been starting to earn with his first Doctor and Rose, before the Daleks and the Game Station changed everything. A chance to try again sounded too good to be true.

The Doctor was backing off, uncertain. “I’m just saying, stay as long as you want to stay. I didn’t mean…”

Reaching out to touch his arm, Jack said, “I need to know that you’ll tell me if you start to get uncomfortable. With the fixed point in time thing.”

“It’s a deal.” The Doctor popped up from the sofa. “We can probably walk over to Taste of Punjab now and pick up our food. Or do you want to stay here? I can go.” He snatched a purple cashmere frock coat from a coat tree. “Then later I’ll introduce you to my friend Clara. You two ought to get along like a house on fire. Complete with danger to bystanders.” He was smiling. “Back in a bit.” 

Jack sank back onto the sofa, grateful for a moment to catch up. Everything had suddenly changed. 

This was going to be fantastic.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're thinking that the Doctor wouldn't smoke pot, you must not have read the EDAs, where he claims to have dropped acid. IT'S CANON. Well, canon-ish.
> 
> Here's the concert that Eight and Fitz go to: http://www.ledzeppelin.com/show/june-2-1973 
> 
> I think it's a crying shame that Jack didn't get to meet Eleven on screen.


End file.
